Shuntaro Furukawa, President & Representative Director of Nintendo Co., Ltd. in an interview with Nikkei was asked on the future of adding more subsidiaries, following the Next Level Games acquisition.
Furukawa stated that the company isn’t just “blindly acquiring companies because we want development resources.” He went on to say, “We don’t think that simply expanding the scale of our business will really improve the value of the entertainment that Nintendo provides.” He also mentioned how the company’s war chest is over ¥1 trillion ($9.45 billion) and they “will make investments if necessary.”
Regarding the acquisition of Next Level Games, Furukawa responded, “This is a partner that we have been working with for many years to develop various software, and we decided that we could improve the quality and speed of development by making it a subsidiary and working together.”
The acquisition of Next Level Games was Nintendo’s first major acquisition since Monolith Soft in 2007. NLG was purchased when the owner-directors decided to sell their shares. It’s safe to say that Nintendo will only purchase studios when needed since their company culture does not believe that more investments will always lead to improved output.
Dave’s first Nintendo platform was the GameCube when he was age 7; however, he was introduced to Nintendo through Duck Hunt on NES.